Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Tomasz Dąbrowski FREE4ARTS: Six Months and Ten Drops

3

Tomasz Dąbrowski FREE4ARTS: Six Months and Ten Drops

By

View read count
Tomasz Dąbrowski FREE4ARTS: Six Months and Ten Drops
FREE4ARTS may be the most Nordic-sounding group of Polish, Copenhagen-based prolific trumpeter Tomasz Dabrowski. The quartet features colleagues from the musicians-run collective and record label Barefoot Records including baritone saxophonist Sven Dam Meinild, who also plays in Dąbrowski international quartet Ocean Fanfare, and drummer Kasper Tom Christiansen, who collaborated before with Dąbrowski in the Polish-Danish trio Hunger Pangs. Pianist Jacob Anderskov, in his first recorded collaboration with Dąbrowski, recorded a fine duet with Christiansen, Chroma (Barefoot Records, 2014).

This quartet of forward-thinking musicians enable Dąbrowski to offer a rich, multi-layered vision that encompasses modern jazz, European avant-garde and third-stream jazz, Polish and Slavic folk elements and even Tibetan chants. Dąbrowski wrote all the compositions for the quartet debut, having in mind these specific musicians opinionated and thoughtful voices. The sound of this quartet stresses a strong sense of space, subtlety and contemplative tone, at times close to the aesthetics of many ECM releases by Nordic outfits.

FREE4ARTS sketches a well-balanced interplay, firmly based on the solid yet driving pulse of Christiansen, alone with no bass. Anderskov outlines the course with wise, skeletal touches, and these two allow Dąbrowski and Meinild to soar, and gel their voices in a dense, melodic interplay, beautifully articulated on "Dan." But even in the open-ended, spare pieces like "Ten Drops" and "Flip and Reverse," both feature the quartet in its searching phase, it flirts with melodic themes. The more experimental pieces that borrow elements from the third-stream aesthetics as "I Made It to Ordea" and "Heavy Ah" offer an intriguing sense of order and structure, both highlight the strong, almost telepathic interplay of Dąbrowski and Meinild.

An impressive debut by an excellent quartet that only began to explore its great potential.

Track Listing

Six Months; Dan; Ten Drops; I Made It to Oradea; Flip and Reverse; Heavy Ah; Five Weeks.

Personnel

Tomasz Dąbrowski: trumpet, mutes; Sven Dam Meinild: baritone sax; Jacob Anderskov: grand piano; Kasper Tom Christiansen: drums.

Album information

Title: Six Months and Ten Drops | Year Released: 2015 | Record Label: Barefoot Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

Near

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.